A graduate student’s principal objective is to earn a graduate degree. Appointment as a Graduate research Associate (GRA) contributes to that objective by providing an apprenticeship experience along with financial support. This apprenticeship complements formal instruction and gives the student practical, personal experience that can be gained only by performing research activities.

GRA positions provide a number of benefits to the student:

• Full payment of tuition and academic fees,
• A monthly stipend typically provided on 12 month cycles,
• 85% payment of OSU Student Health Insurance premiums for the student,
• Payment of computer technology fee as well as laboratory fees,
• Payment of research-related expenses,
• Travel costs for conference and research-related expenses may also be provided,
• Total value of this package can be nearly $60,000 per year.
• Further information about GRA appointments and benefits. Includes a basic description of benefits as well as a Benefit Overview Booklet for download.

In exchange for these benefits the student serves on a research project available in the program. As part of the GRA agreement, the student agrees to assist his/her advisor with research work. This commitment comes to, on average, approximately 20 hours per week, though this may vary from time to time. The research project Principal Investigator will serve as the student's academic and research advisor. More about finding an advisor, below.

Please note: Since research carried out for a government and/or industrial organization is usually focused on a topic of concern to the funding source, we cannot guarantee that a student's area of interest will always match the available GRA positions for a given term.

The GRA position is our primary form of financial aid [more about financial aid in the MSE-WE department].

Questions?

Please contact Mark Cooper (email, 614-292-7280, 143 Fontana Lab) with any questions you might have.

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Note regarding funding status: Our faculty submit research funding proposals throughout the year. Funding may have been received by the faculty (listed below as funding confirmed), or may not yet be in-hand, but likely (listed below as possible funding).

Current GRA openings, MSE & WE

Gerald Frankel

Contact: web & email | Phone: 614-688-4128 | Office: 544 MacQuigg Labs

• Director, Fontana Corrosion Center (FCC) and Professor (Sc.D., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1985); corrosion, electrochemistry and embrittlement.

1-2 PhD openings in MSE for Autumn 2013--funding confirmed; please contact Dr. Frankel for details on this project.

Maryam Ghazisaeidi

Contact: email

• Assistant Professor studying the field of computational Materials Science at the atomic-scale with an emphasis on understanding structure and chemistry of defects in structural materials to predict novel material behavior.

1 PhD opening in MSE for Autumn 2013--funding confirmed; please contact Dr. Ghazisaeidi for details on this project.

Alan Luo

Contact: email

• Professor; fields of study: Advanced metallic materials for transportation applications, Manufacturing processes for light metals (Al, Mg, Ti), and Integrated computational materials engineering.

1 PhD opening in MSE for Autumn 2013--funding confirmed; please contact Dr. Luo for details on this project.

Roberto Myers

Contact: web & email | Phone: 614-292-8439 | Office: 476 Watts Hall

• Assistant Professor, (Ph.D., University of California Santa Barbara, 2006); Electronic materials, optical materials, wide bandgap semiconductors.

1-2 PhD openingsin MSE for Autumn 2013--funding confirmed; project is on magnetic materials / growth processing for thermal spintronics; materials with extraordinary spin/heat coupling. Need student with good lab abilities and interest in physics. [New 6/5/13]

Stephen Niezgoda

Contact: email

• Assistant Professor; will be developing cross-disciplinary research programs in crystal plasticity, techniques in experimental and simulation co-design, computational material design tools, and materials data sciences.

1 PhD opening in MSE for Autumn 2013--funding confirmed; please contact Dr. Niezgoda for details on this project.

Wei Zhang

Contact: web and email | Phone: 614-242-0522 | Office: 120 Edison Joining Technology Center

• Associate Professor (PhD, Pennsylvania State University, 2004); Computational modeling of materials-processing-property relationship in manufacturing processes; Multi-material joining for automotive and aerospace structures; Advanced experimental techniques in support of computational modeling.

1 PhD opening in Welding Engineering for Summer/Autumn 2013--funding confirmed, U.S. citizenship required. Please contact Dr. Zhang for details about the project.

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Finding an advisor

For newly admitted students:

The MSE dept. does not assign new students to an advisor; instead, we ask that you meet with each of the faculty who have openings. The professor you work with will act as your academic and research advisor during your graduate studies at Ohio State.

Above, please find the list of available funded research positions. Please meet first with faculty who have openings in your area(s) of interest. If, after meeting with these professors, you do not have an advisor, please meet with the remaining faculty on the list who have openings and come to an agreement to work with one of these faculty. You are required to find an advisor from the funded openings available. This should occur during your first term of enrollment.

You are strongly encouraged to contact any faculty member above who shares your field of interest. Contacting the faculty prior to your arrival on campus can help speed your placement on a research project.

Every effort is made to match you with a project in your field of interest. However, we have only a few positions, each of which has a narrow research focus. Therefore, you may find that the area of research you will be working in is not an exact match with your interests.

When you have found an advisor, inform the department Human Resources Officer in 176 Watts Hall and Mark Cooper in 143 Fontana Lab.